1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus for making it possible to use a function depending on bidirectional communication with an image forming apparatus, and a control method of the information processing apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
To use a peripheral device such as an image forming apparatus from an information processing apparatus, it is generally necessary to install a specific device driver corresponding to the peripheral device (a printer driver when the peripheral device is an image forming apparatus) in an operating system (OS) which operates on the information processing apparatus. When using the image forming apparatus, the printer driver is activated from an application, setting necessary for printing is performed, and data is output to the image forming apparatus. When outputting data from the printer driver to the image forming apparatus, an instruction for printing to paper is performed by transferring print data obtained from the application to the image forming apparatus. In communication between the image forming apparatus and printer driver, not only print data is transferred from the printer driver, but also a bidirectional communication protocol for printing communication using information from the apparatus is widely used.
This bidirectional communication protocol allows the printer driver to check a memory status. Therefore, stable printing can be executed even when using an image forming apparatus having a small memory amount. In addition, the bidirectional communication protocol allows the information processing apparatus to display status information of the image forming apparatus, and display a message to the user.
The above-described bidirectional communication protocol is also used to suppress the cost of a product. An example is a printing system in which image generation processing (rendering) is performed on an information processing apparatus instead of an image forming apparatus, and the rendered image data is transferred to the image forming apparatus. This printing system is called a host-based printing system, and capable of suppressing the cost of the image forming apparatus.
Furthermore, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-309617 (patent literature 1) has proposed a printer adaptor which is connected to an image forming apparatus directly (by local connection) or across a network, and functions as a host apparatus.
Unfortunately, this technique proposed in above-described patent literature 1 cannot implement functions which have been implemented by using the bidirectional communication protocol. For example, it is impossible to obtain and use various kinds of information such the memory status, print image correction processing, and device information of the image forming apparatus.